Zen Buddhism

SR No.: 011121
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 36

BEYOND THE INTELLECT
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evil in the world of the opposites have equal value, or none. It broadens the sympathies, for the whole of manifestation, not an arbitrary half, is experienced. It emphasises that all alike is a matter of experience; all life becomes the "soul's gymnasium". We have no enemies thereafter, for all can teach us something, and the most unexpected teacher is an excellent friend.
But this not the end. "If all is reduced to the One, to what is the One reduced?" Such is a famous koan, a word or phrase in Zen, the solving of which lies far beyond the intellect. Their 'solving" leads in the end to satori, a flash of enlightenment by the light of which both heaven and earth shall pass away, and life be for the first time utterly experienced. What is the answer? To reduce the Many to the One is admirable, but still we are left gazing with rapturous pride on our splendid handiwork, ourselves on the one hand, the One on the other.
From the height of the "higher third" we viewed each opposite from the viewpoint of both. There is, however, a fifth and final stage. We must understand, by direct experience, that all is One, then that the Many and the One are what? Presumably something above either. No, this will not do. We are still in the net of the opposites, still meshed in the net of intellectual juggling. To understand this final solution of the opposites we must regress for the moment, gain our second (intuitive) wind, and then rush the enemies' defences straight up the hill.
In The Essence of Buddhism, Professor D. T. Suzuki, the greatest living authority on Buddhist philosophy and the greatest authority on Zen, has explained, so far as words, the symbols of the intellect, can ever explain, the ultimate heights of Buddhist reasoning. Only the philosophers of
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